[tsmarsh]

It’s edge cases like this that make me wonder about the whole concept of nations.

It makes citizens sound like property / cattle.

“I believe my cow pooped on your lawn. I demand the right to inspect your lawn for my cows poop to retrieve the poop. Expect further consultation if we decide you illegally benefited from that poop. I don’t care that you are ok with the poop or that the cow came to your lawn and pooped there of its own valition. In Cowville pooping outside of your allotted pen is illegal.”

Of course when you take that argument to its logical conclusion I may find that I’ve just argued for a firewall / vetting system that would prevent data leaving the national networks ‘illegally’. Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m arguing the other way, that national borders make less sense than ever and freedom of people, ideas and data requires a completely different take on national soverignty.

[vinceguidry]

> It makes citizens sound like property / cattle.

This is, precisely, how polities have always worked. Personal freedom of movement is circumscribed to lawfully prescribed means. It wasn't until after WW2 and airplanes when ordinary people gained the technical capability to move around. Before then, you had to have lots of money and time to travel. Serfs were considered part of the land, they needed permission to leave.

With the Renaissance came the loosening of identification from commoners being a part of the land, to being a part of the city / political region. The concept of people as property never really changed and is intrinsic to the idea of governance, which imposes rules that people must live by, and specifies what kinds of commerce can go on. Citizenship is just the loosening of who owns you from your city to your nation.

Things are changing, quite rapidly, but don't expect the idea of people as belonging to a polity to ever really go away. Governments require tax revenue to operate, and governments that don't have to rely on their citizens for those taxes are governments that don't have to be held accountable to those citizens. (See Russia) Your government is always going to treat you like a belonging, and demand the right to use your efforts for the good of the nation however it sees fit.

[vanderZwan]

> This is, precisely, how polities have always worked. Personal freedom of movement is circumscribed to lawfully prescribed means. It wasn't until after WW2 and airplanes when ordinary people gained the technical capability to move around. Before then, you had to have lots of money and time to travel. Serfs were considered part of the land, they needed permission to leave.

[Citation needed]

From what I have been taught by friends of mine who studied International Migration & Ethnic Relations, people moved around a lot more freely before the nation state came into existence than they do now, because there were no borders to keep them out.

[vinceguidry]

Sure, if you had the money, time and/or motivation. If you didn't, it was extremely difficult to travel. Nobody would trust you, and staying at inns was expensive. Get caught camping in lands where no one knew you, and you're at their mercy.

[bwanab]

I'm trying to imagine in what historical period that would have been. Whether the border was that of a modern nation-state, a principality, or a village the effect would have been the same.

[Maybestring]

What time period is that? I'm not sure what historians consider the first nation state.

[chimeracoder]

> What time period is that? I'm not sure what historians consider the first nation state.

There's disagreement about this, but the contemporary concept of the nation-state is believed to have merged between the 17th and 19th centuries. 1648 is usually given as the earliest date, though that's partly out of a desire to ascribe a specific year to what was actually a slow process.

[wu-ikkyu]

National boundaries are kaput on the World Wide Web.

[liberte82]

Once corporations start deciding it's cheaper to just provide their own healthcare to its workers rather than going through the broken American system, watch out. Corporate fascism is the new feudalism.

[lwf]

This is literally how Kaiser Permanente was founded — pre-paid healthcare for industrial workers, eventually expanded to cover families of workers, eventually expanded as an integrated managed-care offering for companies to offer their employees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente#Early_years

Kaiser is regarded as one of the highest-quality providers, and the regional health plans it runs are operated as non-profits.